Stepping out of her crumbling cocoon of sand, Pakura was greeted by the sight of Lin Feng struggling against an abomination that looked like a pufferfish with a hilt.

The twin-handled sword, Hiramekarei, lay beside him as he kept the thing from chomping down on his face by sticking a tanto into its gaping maw, jamming it open.

The sandy platform was in shambles. Cracks proliferated its entirety and chunks of sand were separating from it, falling to the ground far beneath them.

She could see the space around Lin Feng’s body warp as it kept the spines of the writhing creature from turning him into swiss cheese.

As she watched, the warping grew weaker and weaker and the creature seemed to grow larger and more vigorous in its struggles.

“Ahh… girl, am I glad to see you back… as you can see I’m in a bit of a pinch.”

She grimaced at the possibility of having to approach the disgusting thing. “What the fuck is that thing?” she asked with a hand on her hip as she raised an eyebrow.

“The true form of Samehada, the living sword… it turned out to be a faux tailed-beast with an incomplete soul that symbiotes with its partner to complete itself.”

“That’s good isn’t it? Isn’t merging with tailed-beasts what you’ve been doing all this time?”

Samehada had somehow managed to spit out the tanto and clamped onto his arm with its serrated teeth, finally drawing some blood as it penetrated his weakened defences.

Lin Feng howled in agony as he slammed his fist repeatedly into what he assumed was its head. “Owww… let go you bitch. Girl, I’ll explain later… if we delay this any further, it’ll really eat me… for now follow my instructions.”

Pakura immediately felt the link between them open, flooding her psyche with his emotions.

Irritation, anxiety and hope, colourful streaks in a white sea of calm.

“Immerse yourself in the sensation of my emotions yet keep yourself separate and reveal your emotions to me. Imagine that we are connected by a string formed from our feelings. Feel what you feel. Feel what I feel. Show me what you feel. Show me what I feel. Two beings, one mood. Two moods, one being.”

The lilting cadence of his chant accompanied by the hypnotic flux of his emotions drew her into a trance where their minds intermingled in a riotous burst of colour. She felt his trepidation peter out in favour of anticipation as the bond between them seemed to become more tangible.

Her surprise and embarrassingly, her concern leaked out into the link, exposing it to the both of them.

She caught a hint of amusement from him causing her mortification and irritation to peak.

Before she could lash out at him, the bond snapped into place, jolting her mind. She opened her eyes and found herself in another world.

It was an unadorned, white plane that stretched out in all directions for an indeterminate distance.

Her form was an illusory version of herself, seeming more like a projection rather than an entity while near at hand stood Lin Feng, facing off against Samehada which he had somehow managed to peel off him and wrap in dark metal shackles.

He seemed more solid than her and she could clearly feel the bond connecting them.

“Welcome to my mindscape, girl.” He smirked.

“Just as insipid as you… should have known.” She huffed, crossing her arms.

Awkwardly fumbling for a rejoinder and finding none, he tried to shift the topic. Pointing at the struggling living sword that had grown to the size of a large man, he explained, “That thing has the ability to devour energies. Till now, due to its incomplete soul, it couldn’t absorb energy by itself and needed a host to provide it with energy or use it to devour the chakra of others. Since no one here can absorb world vitality, let alone higher tier energy like Void Force, its growth was stunted and it could be used as a weapon.”

“Let me guess… when it came in contact with you it absorbed world vitality and Void Force and evolved into something more dangerous that even you can’t handle.”

“Ah… hahaha… How could that be? I would never make such a preliminary mistake. Hahaha.” His stilted laughter faded out under her pointed stare and she felt his embarrassment from the bond.

He sighed and drooped his shoulders. “Yeah… I had just finished disposing of the corpse of its previous master and was trying to teleport it to me by wrapping it with Void Force like I did for you and Hiramekarei when it went crazy and sucked up all of it and followed the space link to reach the sand platform and assault me.”

“You saw how the platform was crumbling, didn’t you? That was the thing sucking up world vitality from it faster than I could supplement from the surroundings. The more it consumes, the stronger it grows. I think it had a limit on how much it could consume before it contacted Void Force but now?” He shook his head, “Now it is a bottomless pit.”

Pakura asked, “Why didn’t resort to soul combat before I came? Isn’t that your specialty for assimilating things like this?”

“As a living weapon, it was always the subordinate in the relationship… but after the mutation, its become much stronger and its attribute has enhanced too. Soul energy is just yin chakra… it can be absorbed… if I’d let it into my mind, it would have sucked me dry and taken over control, turning me into a monster that only craved energy… given time and unobstructed, I would have turned this world into an empty husk before moving on to other planes.”

She felt his seriousness through the bond as her shock permeated it. “Then why can you shackle it now?”

The grim mood melted like snow under the sun as intense self-satisfaction flooded the bond. “It’s the bond. By connecting myself to you, I am somehow protected from its chakra absorption. Given that it’s ability is most surely some principle level thing, like the devouring principle or absorption principle, I think that our bond too has some sort of principle involved. Now, if…”

Incredulity flooded the bond as she interrupted him. “Stop! Stop for a second! You mean you did this based on speculation?! You guessed?! How could you be so irresponsible?!”

He defensively replied, “What?! I had no idea this would happen either… you were my last straw to grasp. You know how tailed beasts are. They convert any sort of physical impact or mechanical energy below a certain threshold into world vitality. That’s why its so hard to injure them unless your damage output is higher than their conversion threshold. How else would solid masses of world vitality have such tenacity. And this new Samehada had the bonus attribute of energy absorption, making it immune to all my techniques… in fact the only reason I lasted so long is because I follow the path of Heavenly Communion and don’t store energy in my own body, or I’d have been sucked dry within minutes. The only way to hurt it is via physical means… but even that genin with all eight gates open only managed to injure it. With the energy it converted from the kick, it was able to repair most of the damage.”

“Well… I don’t know… you’ve always been this invincible existence and now suddenly you seem mortal just like the rest of us… I guess the contrast got to me. I apologize for my rudeness.” She apologized with a bow.

He chuckled, “Glad to know you think so highly of me… I guess?” a warm feeling both of them couldn’t name permeated the bond.

She blushed and straightened up. “Ahem. So, what do we do with that thing?”

“We wait.”

“For what?” she asked curiously.

Instead of replying, he pointed at the sword which had stopped struggling.

“GiGiGiGiGi!!”

With a warbling scream of outrage, Samehada exploded out with a shockwave of energy that shattered the chains and passed over him, ruffling his clothes and hair and passing through her ethereal form.

The sword, visibly smaller after its outburst, shot towards them at blinding speeds, propelled by another burst of chakra.

“Let me try something I just learnt... Gate of Opening, Gate of Healing… OPEN!”

The ground cracked as Lin Feng stepped forward and his right leg blurred as it shot upwards, slamming into the chin of the lunging sword sending it flying back.

“Owww! Shit, that hurt me a lot more than it hurt you, bitch!” he cried out as he hopped about on one leg.

With a wave of his hand, a curtain of rose coloured flame emerged baseless and submerged the sword which was tumbling in mid-air. “Enthusiasm Fire!”

Samehada slammed into the ground, writhing around as the flame burnt it.

It opened its mouth and inhaled deeply, warping the space around it causing the flame to gutter as it tried to absorb it.

The bond between them twinged and an incorporeal strength proliferated through the mindscape, steadying the flame.

“GiGiGiGiGi!!”

Enraged, the burning sword shot towards the duo even faster, chained bursts of chakra causing it to turn into a flaming blur.

Slamming his palms to the ground, he yelled, “Hey! Didn’t your mother tell you that persistent women aren’t attractive!”

A dark metallic wall rose from the ground, blocking its path. “Resolution Earth: Adamantine walls.”

Bang!!

With a collision that made the entire mindscape seem vulnerable, Samehada slammed into the wall, warping it.

It slowly peeled off from the wall and lay dazed on the floor for a moment before its energy reserves healed it. The shockwave seemed to have had the unexpected effect of blowing out the spiritual flames on it.

“GiGiGiGiGi!!”

“GiGiGi!!!”

“GiGi!!”

Thoroughly incensed, it screamed, spitting out blobs of dark and light energy that coalesced into a midnight black ball of pure destruction.

The ground around it fissured from the weight of the condensed chakra as the sword parted its maw, swallowing it.

Pakura’s eyes widened as she saw the tailed-beast bomb forming, the suffocating pressure causing her to unceasingly backlash despite her incorporeal nature.

She turned to Lin Feng and was startled by the confident smirk on his face as well as the confidence oozing through their bond.

With a hearty laugh, he punched the ground, “Get it through your thick head already, I’m single and not ready to mingle!”

Despite the tension, her lips twitched at his lame break-up jokes.

Just as Samehada opened its mouth to shoot the tailed-beast bomb, a metallic fist rose from the ground, slamming its mouth shut, cracking its teeth with the force.

The bomb detonated inside it, causing it to inflate like a balloon before deflating with smoke pouring out of its mouth.

By now, the sword had used up a lot of its energy, causing it to return to its normal size.

It quivered as it healed from the aftermath of the failed attack.

Its spines retracted into it except for a few that fused into fins as its body grew more streamlined and its hilt morphed into a tail. Two golden eyes formed on the sides of its head, locking onto Lin Feng and Pakura with an undisguised malice.

Lin Feng’s laughter snapped Pakura out of her apprehension. “Haha! I was waiting for this. After swallowing the soul of all its previous masters and absorbing Void force, its finally become a complete soul through this intense fight.”

“Isn’t that bad news?” asked Pakura probingly.

“What? No! Its great news. Until now, I couldn’t let loose as I was worried about it entering into a symbiotic relation with me. Its like the saying about an idiot dragging you down to his level and beating you with experience. But now that its become a complete soul, I can use all my techniques on it without compunction!”

Roar!!

No longer the immature squalling of an incomplete soul, Samehada’s roar vibrated the entire mindscape as it barrelled towards them.

Lin Feng’s face drained of emotion as he joined both his hands together in the posture of prayer. A great dignity emanated off him as the light of Karmic Virtue shone from beneath the skin of his face, obfuscating his features in a golden brilliance. The Enthusiasm Fire burnt even more prosperously tinging with a holy saffron to form the Fire of Karma, condensing into a floating lotus throne.

He stepped on the void, flaming lotuses blooming at each step to cradle his bare feet as he ascended to the throne and sat cross legged on it.

His eyes bloomed with a scary brilliance as he stared at the approaching beast.

Warned by its instincts of a fatal danger, the shark immediately turned tail and flushed away towards the walls of the mindscape, seeking to finish the fight in the real world.

There was once a riverboat,

That sailed the mortal streams.

The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, echoing through the blankness of the mindscape.

Immediately, planks of dark spiritual metal appeared baseless around the fleeing beast, forming into a small ship that caged it in despite its spirited struggles.

There was once a riverboat,

That traversed the brook of dreams.

A shimmering stream of water formed of memories flowed in a meandering course from one end of the mindscape to the other, picking up the ship and carrying it downstream. A wayward breeze formed of thoughts filled its sails, pushing it faster down the course.

It travelled once, then detoured twice,

It floundered, then cycled thrice.

From life to night, from death to day,

It stopped to rest, then sailed away.

Nine times upstream, nine times down,

Nine turns it took to reach Heaven’s crown.

The boat followed the words of the verse, moving in accordance with their lilting rhythm. It reached higher and higher as it traversed the river’s course.

In the very end, it joined the Sky,

Through flames that caused its heart to die.

The river of memories ended in a sea of crimson fire. As the boat passed through the layer of flame, it melted. The impurities sloughing away as flecks of black until all that was left was a transparent marble that glittered with a seven-coloured brilliance.

Just as the pill formed, the bond between them vibrated crazily, as it resonated with something evoked during the concoction process.

Lin Feng opened his mouth and the mindscape twisted as it, along with the pill was inhaled into his stomach.

Without a mindscape, Pakura could not maintain their link and was expelled out of his mind.

In the real world her eyes snapped open to see Samehada, or whatever was left of it slowly melting into his body.

The corners of his eyes elongated and turned outwards and gills formed on his cheeks as the fusion proceeded.

From what she could see of his exposed hands and bare feet, his fingers and toes tapered into claws while the webs between them grew more prominent.

Other than that, he was mostly unchanged in appearance. That could not be said of his strength.

In the flash that he opened his eyes, the world seemed to lose colour as an Aura, formidable to the pinnacle, dispersed from him, causing the hearts of birds within the radius of a mile to stop beating from fear.

When their gazes met, Pakura felt she was looking into the eyes of an apex predator.

A predator that could reap her life with a mere thought.

Lin Feng blinked and the moment passed. The aura fading away like a bad dream.

Their connection returned in full force as his jubilation washed over her, overriding the fear he had engendered the moment before.

He said, “I know now what connects us… and what it means.”

His smile had a lot more pointy teeth than before. “And what it means for our enemies.”